Red Panda Progress

I started painting my piece for Light Grey Art Lab's upcoming show, Macro & Micro. One of my resolutions for this year was challenging myself to confront things I usually avoid in art, like painting backgrounds. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point I stopped planning setting and opted for solid color or white backgrounds which really seemed to stunt creative growth for me. So for this piece, I made sure to place the red panda traveler and his friend in an actual environment (as in with a landscape...it exists nowhere else besides on the paper). This progress shot is my second attempt with a sky I'm happy with, and I can feel a watercolor gradient addiction creeping on... My first attempt became muddied with gouache and the colors weren't taking shape as I planned. Lesson learned: watercolor gradients work much better for backgrounds than gouache. Now to get back to work!

Endogen Book Cover

       

This past year my husband finished his first science fiction novel, and since I'm an artist that also happens to be his wife, he asked me to design his book cover. The task was daunting at first, but once I moved past the idea of learning more techniques with Photoshop and staring at a computer screen for extended hours, this assignment ended up being fun and rewarding. His story is set in future Earth which has been destroyed by evolved nano machines, so he wanted a gritty but modern theme that incorporated the evil locust-like bot. Evil things are a challenge because I always make them cute somehow...

Endogen is independently published as an ebook and as a real life book on Amazon! As a bonus, the physical copy of the book includes four exclusive sketch studies of the various evolutionary stages of the electric insect! Be sure to visit the links to read the summary and preview the beginning of the book! (Every sentence needs an exclamation point when you're self promoting!)

If science fiction isn't your thing, maybe you can pass this on to a sci-fi fan you know! If you do, you know we're giving you a pat on the back AND a high five from afar.

Animals in Teacups: WIP

I haven't updated my shop in a while, and the past couple of months my mind has been focused on greeting cards, so I decided to paint some animals in tea cups! The original plan was for 8 animals but two of them didn't look good and I'm not sure what to replace them with. Any ideas? I think I'm at a good stopping point because I  have to make this a side project for now so I can start preparing for the Macro & Micro show at Light Grey Art Lab! There are four categories: Animal, Vegetable, Minerals, and Everything Else. I'm  in the Animal category and I've decided a red panda is a premium choice. Last night I sketched up the basic composition of the piece while watching Spirited Away for inspiration. That's a method that definitely works so I think I'll try it again! 

In other news, the physical copy of my husband's book came in the mail yesterday! Pictures coming soon!

Beautiful Forever Show and Comic Book Reads

Lunar Scout | Digital | Temporary Tattoo | ©2013 Darla Okada

This is my piece for Light Grey Art Lab's Beautiful Forever show! The concept for the show is really cool: temporary tattoos! The work of 40 artists is available to see in their online gallery, and you can also purchase them for $10 in their shop. It was really fun working on this design, especially since this was my first 100% digital illustrative piece! *pat on the back* I hope you like it, and be sure to check out what the other artists created! I feel very honored to have my temporary tats on display with some talented people. 

The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

Tokyo on Foot by Florent Chavouet

And now for comics! From my last loot of comic books/ graphic novels, these four were my absolute favorite and I had to read them twice before returning them to the library. Well, I read The Arrival more like 3 times... Each had an excellent story, with the exception of Tokyo on Foot which is a journal, but I loved the stories he told with his illustrations. I don't want to say much more besides I highly recommend them! Issue 11 of Saga is released tomorrow so I get to make a trip to Boulder and see my little brother!